Problems with health expenses have no borders and they increase with the size of the markets. It was perhaps the reason for the German authorities to cope with the hearing aids, the biggest private European market. From March 2010 on two prices will drop: The fixed reimbursement rate for a hearing aid drop from 420 Euro to 360 Euro. The flat reimbursement rate for hearing aid repairs drop from 190 Euro to 160 Euro.This concerns only the 90% of the population that have a public health insurance. 10% have private insurances and are not affected. They will get reimbursements up to 100%. The BIHA is convinced that in a time frame of 3-5 years the public healthinsurances will cut the poor rest of reimbursements and do not pay for hearing aids any longer. Reasons: Hearing aids are more and more regarded as high tech consumer electronics and not as prostheses. And the public health insurance must save money because the costs for public health care are exploding. It might be that the private insurance also wants to get rid of the hearing aid costs. The acousticians are not scared about this development because they regard themselves as specialized retailers and have learned to sell. And the industry thinks that the market will not break down because the missing "poor rest of reimbursements" will not change much. The market will shrink for a while and that's all, as it already occured in the optical industry.The health insurances do not pay for glasses any longer. On the contrary, both, acousticians and the industry are looking forward to getting rid of the struggles with health insurances, governments and ENTs. A private market opens more options for acousticians and the industry to market and sell their products. The BIHA hopes that prescriptions from ENTs will no longer be necessary then and that the health insurances can no longer rule over the market.